UK: We Must Not Conflate Governance With Democracy

Giles Peel discusses his career in the armed forces and
his decision to move into governance, the dangers of undermining
the unitary board system and the value of the
secretariat.

Giles is Head of Governance Advisory Practice
at DAC Beachcroft and a retired Royal Navy Captain.

Could you tell us about your career in the Royal Navy?

I joined straight from school as a university cadet. I then went
to university in London and during the vacations came back to sea.
I spent 20 years as a full career Royal Navy Supply and Secretariat
Officer – now called a Logistics Officer. I served all over
the world and from time to time in Whitehall too. I ended up as a
Royal Navy Captain and then decided to leave early to start a
second career in governance.

What prompted that decision?

I had always wanted to work in business of some sort, so
although I was always going to spend a good chunk of time in the
navy, it seemed a sensible thing to do to prepare for after that.
Having done the ICSA qualification I wanted to try and use it while
I was still relatively young, so I made a decision to leave before
I was 40. I left at 39 years and six months – just in time to
meet that target!

In my day you began a full career at the age of 18 – you
could apply to serve for 30 plus years. Nowadays you have to sign
on for a series of periods of time. So it is even more important
today to have some notion about what you might do when you
leave.

Back then it was considered odd to leave at the age of 39.
Nowadays there are breakpoints when you are in your late 20s and
30s. You have to be focused on having a set of skills that you
develop in the military, so that you have a choice when you get to
those breakpoints.

Could you tell us about your experience of studying to become a
chartered secretary?

It was not easy – the exams are difficult. One of the
attractions and the detractions of being a chartered secretary is
that it requires you to be numerate and literate and our education
system still streams you into one or other of those things. So to
do something that actually stretched both, and in terms of company
law and financial accounting, seemed to me to be a good thing
– and that was the main appeal.

I did the studying on my own, which meant understanding the
syllabus, reading the books, shutting myself away for months at a
time, prepping for the exams and then turning up to London to sit
the papers.

In one morning, I landed from a ship to get on the train to
London and sit the exam. It was not an easy way of doing it, but
because of the life I was leading there was no other way. I did one
course with the Kensington School of Business. That was a mix of
distance learning and turning up on Saturday mornings for an
eight-hour financial accounting session, which I did for about
three or four months – it required a lot of discipline.

The thing I found most useful as a test on how I was doing was
reading the Lex column in the Financial Times – being at sea,
occasionally a bunch of newspapers would be dropped off. If I could
understand more than half of what they were talking about, I felt I
was progressing.

Do you feel that members of the armed forces are a natural fit
for governance or secretariat roles?

I was in a specialisation that was intrinsically based on
high-quality administrative skills and staff work (as the military
call it). I have been an ADC (aide-de-camp) to an admiral, an
executive assistant to another senior person and I have worked in
the Ministry of Defence where high levels of skill, negotiation and
analysis are required. So the skills I learned lent themselves to
the secretariat very well.

It is not a clear cut thing, because plenty of young people now
want to join the forces to serve in exciting places, to get
themselves into slightly sticky situations, and therefore
administration and governance are not necessarily the bedfellows
for the young service man or woman.

But there is no doubt that if you want to make more of a career
of governance, if you get towards the administrative side of
government – which in the Ministry of Defence you do –
then you learn very important skills.

I also believed that if I was going to compete with civil
service colleagues for jobs – and there is a lot of
competition for jobs within uniform and non-uniform people –
then having the ICSA qualification gave me an edge because I was
able to say I had strong commercial qualification (and I do view
this as a commercial qualification).

I have done a Part 3 accounting exam and an equivalent law exam,
so I could hold my own with Treasury officials and people like
that. Today that is as relevant now as it was then.

Does the armed forces experience governance issues in the same
way as businesses and charities?

In areas such as financial decision-making undoubtedly there is
a lot of similarity. Anything to do with the infamous planning
process in the Ministry of Defence, procurement and major
contracts, there are similarities too. But it is also about being
able to relate to the fact that the civil service must act in a
more governed way and therefore anything you can do to hold up the
uniformed end of it is a good thing.

What advice would you give to members of the armed forces who
are planning their second career after the services?

There are some parts of the job finding process that are
difficult, so I would make use of the resettlement facilities that
you are offered when you leave − things like CV writing and
skills analysis.

I would spend a proportion of your time every year that you
serve thinking about what next. Cliff-edge planning does nobody any
favours. I found I was much more comfortable about staying longer
once I had become a chartered secretary, because I knew I had
alternatives.

You are now Head of Governance Advisory Practice at DAC
Beachcroft. What do you think are the biggest governance challenges
for organisations?

It is a fast moving world and we are constantly on the edge of
having an overburden of regulation. On the one hand you have
demanding investors, shareholders, stakeholders, and on the other
and you have an assertive regulatory regime that is trying to
police that.

So undoubtedly directors are more pressurised with the greater
breadth of compliance and governance knowledge required than in the
past. But governance has to remain practical and agile. A lot of
what I do is to try and deliver pragmatic solutions for my clients
which enable them to comply, but do not stop them from doing their
day job.

I always felt governance was an enabler; I still feel that now.
Well-governed organisations undoubtedly do better – it is not
a coincidence that a well-organised company tends to
flourish.
I have been lucky to work in a number of different jobs; this is my
fourth since I left the navy.

I have also built a non-executive portfolio too. All of that is
possible because I understand how organisations work and I can
contribute to that. Undoubtedly the armed forces gave me the
confidence to be able to believe I could do that.

I have worked hard in the past 15 years to gain the experience
that I lacked when I left. If you serve for the amount of time I
did, you have to be ready to come across bosses who are younger
than you and who probably have less experience than you.

Regarding your submission to the BEIS Select Committee
inquiry, you said that moves to put onerous responsibility
onto NEDs, through the SMR and SIMR, are unhelpful. Could you
outline your concerns?

I am passionate about the principle of collective responsibility
for boards and in law there is no difference between the
liabilities of a non-executive versus an executive. Albeit the
non-executive does have, in some circumstances, a degree of
mitigation, because they do not necessarily have enough operational
understanding of the workings of the organisation.

The SMR and SIMR are pushing some non-executives to be more
responsible for the inner workings, and the two roles they have
quoted most are the chair of the audit committee and the chair of
the remuneration committee.

We have already seen the notion that those types of NEDs are
going to be paid more and that is starting to translate into
reality out there. But, that somehow they have a greater
accountability and should take more interest in the operational
running of a business seems to me to start greying what has
been, up to now, a reasonably well-understood distinction between
non-executive and executive.

One of the challenges I have tried to address with organisations
like the FRC is that I would like to see it making more noise about
this, because if we have categorisation of NEDs, we are no longer
in the same ballpark of collective responsibility. You will get
NEDs who want that responsibility, that profile and that regulatory
extra scrutiny. You will get NEDs that do not want it. I am not
sure we want two tiers of NEDs.

Regarding proposals for worker representation on boards, you
said the idea is superficially attractive and 'it is wrong to
conflate governance with democracy'. Could you elaborate?

Most people acknowledge that liberal capitalism is in trouble at
the moment, because there is no doubt there is corporate excess.
The traditional press targets the 'fat cats' reward for
failure' and so on. You do not have to look far to find
examples of that. The spirit therefore of saying there should be
greater connectivity between a board and senior executives and the
workforce is entirely right.

We can see an example of this in the concept of NHS Foundation
Trusts, where staff governors have a right through a history of
election and appointment to take a greater interest in the affairs
of the boards and, in particular, the conduct and the efficacy of
non-executive directors.

However, the staff governors may potentially find themselves in
an invidious position, because they often know stuff through their
day jobs that they cannot share with their fellow governor
colleagues and feel pressurised to do that. Then, equally, there is
a danger that they become apologists for the board or the
management back in their day jobs. You cannot win in those
ways.

There are European examples of worker representation, but I
suspect if you are to talk to our equivalent corporate secretaries
in the European sphere, they would say that there are massive
levels of bureaucracy.

The fact that the Prime Minister appears to have lessened her
charge on this is sensible. We have got to find ways of holding
people to account so that where there are disparate levels of
remuneration in an organisation, it must be justified. Where there
is reward for failure, that should be targeted.

Whether or not appointing individuals to sit on a board to be
the eyes and ears and the mouthpiece for the workforce, and then
have to go back and justify themselves to their own colleagues is
the answer, I am not sure.

Another area I have done a lot of work on is conflicts of
interest. Conflicts of interest in company law are quite clear;
they must be avoided. There are other sectors where that is blurred
– for example, under the health legislation, a clinical
commissioner group governing body member or a GP has to manage
their conflict to avoid them. So we end up in the realm where
people are jumping in and out of the boardroom as decisions are
being made.

This relates to my point about the practicality of governance,
because somebody has to make the decision. Even if people are
conflicted, if the board has got itself to a position where it can
recognise and declare the conflicts, but also recognises the
imperative of a sensibly made decision, then authorisation, which
company law permits, should drive that through.

I am much more interested in organisations that realise the
responsibility in timely decision making, even if there are some
conflicts present. If they can work their way through those and
still make a decision, nine times out of ten that has got to be
better for the organisation than constantly throwing people out of
rooms and never quite getting to a quorum.

From your experience as a governance adviser, are there any
common cross-sector governance problems?

Boards establishing a cultural set of values and monitoring that
is a constant challenge. A disconnection between board and
workforce is a common theme in lots of areas.

Non-executives who are out of their comfort zone, and therefore
for various reasons become slightly more timid, is another one. I
am always quite intrigued when in their day jobs those
non-executives are executives and therefore bullish. When
translating those relevant experiences to a different sector or a
different type of industry, a lot of people seem to find it hard
and they become more reticent.

Is that because they are not putting in the time with the
organisation or do not understand it well enough?

It is because there is a degree of deference that goes on when
someone comes into a new environment. But if companies and
charities, or any other kind of board, take the time to induct
people properly, that should be overcome. Often the induction
process is inadequate, because you find people one or two years
down the line are still slightly nervous about giving a strong
opinion.

You were Policy Director at ICSA between 2003 and 2007. How has
the profession and the governance sector changed since then?

The profile is much higher and the ICSA has done a very good job
with that. There is recognition in a world of complexity that the
general skills in numeracy and literacy that chartered secretaries
can bring to a boardroom or to an organisation are worth their
weight in gold.

It is interesting that the officers of the company remain as
important. The general counsel and the company secretary remain
pivotal, even though in the Companies Act of 2006, which came in
when I was at ICSA, we were worried that we were losing ground as
the requirement for all companies to have a company secretary was
removed.

But we have not lost ground in any way – rather we have
gained it. Most organisations, even if they do not think they need
a company secretary, recognise they need a chief administrative
officer or similar. Now there is no other qualification that comes
anywhere near ours in giving people the skills for that – I
am very proud of it.

What do you think governance will look like in years to
come?

If we get it wrong it will be a series of dreadfully imposing
regulations which come out of kilter with the basis of company law
and charity law. That is what we have to fear, that the regulation
becomes more draconian than the legislation.

If we get it right, the broad principle of comply or explain
should remain and be strengthened, and the profession has a role in
making sure the explanation is as valid as the compliance.

Interview by Henry Ker, Deputy Editor, Governance and
Compliance

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